


One Track Mind 2

by orphan_account



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Gen, interior conversation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-05
Updated: 2011-10-05
Packaged: 2017-10-24 08:27:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>At a colleague's wedding, Robbie also reacts to the reading of the Epistle.</p>
    </blockquote>





	One Track Mind 2

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Much Too Merry Maiden](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Much+Too+Merry+Maiden).



> At a colleague's wedding, Robbie also reacts to the reading of the Epistle.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


* * *

 

I hate churches, me.  Only ever go in them for weddings and funerals these days, mostly funerals when I come to think of it.

 

 Alright for Hathaway, of course, he’s in his element but at least he’s guiding me – kind of a role reversal – I haven’t got the faintest idea what I’m doing but he touches under  my elbow and presses when we have to stand up.  He discreetly points downwards for me to sit down.

  

I won’t cross myself though – that’s sort of disrespectful.   I’m not one of them, not like James … did I just think that?  Don’t snigger, Robbie, it’s not allowed to laugh in church.  I look across; he is folded up because the pews don’t have enough leg room for him, like a cheap airline.

 

 What’s going on now?  A reading – I look at Hathaway and he’s got his elbows on his knees, hands together, staring at the floor.  I wonder if he’s praying, or maybe writing a shopping list, or thinking about chess moves … who’d know?  Who’d ever know what he’s thinking?

  __

 _If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal_ -

Oh I know this one; we used to get it read to us at the end of term just before we sang God Dismiss us with Thy Blessing.  All about love, I remember.  Speaking in tongues eh?  That’s Hathaway alright, with his Latin and stuff.  Funny though, he can take the piss, I remember when we went into a college and they were saying grace in Latin and he pretended it was the dinner menu and translated it for me.  He said pudding was Spotted Dick and then gave me that sideways look, cheeky beggar.

  

 _And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and_

 _if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing_

 

That’s James to a T.  Know it all, brainy, bright, head full of stuff, has his faith, devoted to his religion but so alone.  I was lucky, I had love in my life, just the once, but that’s more than he’s had, poor sod.  I feel sorry for him, trailing around after an old bugger like me when he ought to have a … a …what do I mean?  Boyfriend, girlfriend, someone his own age.  Would I like that though, really?  And why am I thinking about him all through this bloody reading?

 _If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,_ _but have not love, I gain nothing._  

 

I’d give up everything I have and my body to be burned, Val pet, just to have you back for one day.  A Sunday, so I could wake up with you next to me and make love to you like we used to before the kids were born, that slow, comfortable stuff you do with someone you know really well, when you don’t have to say a word and it all just feels right … Shut yer gob, Lewis, yer going to make yourself cry.  For God’s sake, man, pull yourself together.

 

 

 

 _Love is patient and kind;_

 

You were patient and kind, Val.  You put up with my bloody antisocial hours and having to do things I should have done if the job didn’t get in the way so much.  That’s why I try to be patient with Hathaway when he’s being a pain in the backside – you were patient with me, I’m patient with him, that’s the way it works.  He’s almost taken your place pet – the only person I really care about.  What am I saying?  Look over at James – he’s still in that position, could be praying or listening very hard.  I try to catch his eye but he is staring at the floor as if in deep thought.

 

  

 _love does not envy or boast, it is not arrogant or rude_

 

 We’re back to Hathaway now.  Arrogant as hell and full of himself but never rude, not even when we were screaming at each other in the street when he screwed up so royally on the Will McKewan case.  He didn’t even swear then.  Envy, I’m not sure of.  I sometimes think he envies what I had with Val and my kids, well, Lynn but then I envy what I had with Val.  I would give anything to have it back, well almost anything

 _It does not insist on its own way_ , _it is not irritable or resentful_

 

Oh yes, that is quite the opposite – he’s a moody bugger.  And he’s proved to me at least twice that he’ll do what he thinks is right even if I completely forbid it … but for some bloody reason, I couldn’t imagine life without him.  Not as my sergeant, not as my friend … it would leave a sodding great James-sized hole in my life. __

 _it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth_

 

By the heck!  The caped crusader … that’s him, the White Knight riding out of Camelot to right all wrongs – did someone write this piece especially about Hathaway or am I getting fixated?

 _Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things._

Trials he’s been through, surprised he can believe or hope at all and as far as endurance goes, I sometimes think the bloke is a closet masochist, all that rowing and squash – and God knows what else he’s endured; apart from some maniac transsexual trying to set fire to him and some upper class tart using him as a cross between a walking dildo and a source of classified information.  I shake my head and glance at him again.  He’s smiling a bit – wonder what he’s thinking?

 _Love never ends_

 

Doesn’t, does it?  I still love you, Val, but I wonder if you ever get it back.  Or do you have just one chance in life and I’ve had mine.  Oh I hate weddings, they make you so bloody miserable, not like a good funeral.  Could I ever feel about someone else the way I felt about you, pet?  Or will it be comfort and companionship the next time around with a spot of passion if I’m really lucky?

 _As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away_

 _When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways_

 But you haven’t, have you James?  Wherever you look, the shadow of Mortmaigne is looming over you, blighting whatever chance you might have of happiness.  Making me worried that your devotion to me is a hangover – older man, father figure …oh bloody hell James if only it hadn’t happened and I could just come out and say I fancy you without worrying what kind of damage that might do to you again. __

 _When I became a man, I gave up childish ways_

 _For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face._

 

Couldn’t you see lad, it’s time to put the toys away and really come out - come out to play in the real world?  God but I’m getting stupid here.  I wish this service would end and we could get on to the reception.  I need a drink.  I’m driving myself bonkers here.  And there is James, drinking it all in, ex-priest and fully paid-up Catholic …who has to take my hand and guide me because I don’t have the foggiest what I’m doing here.

 

 _So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love._

And I hear Hathaway’s friend Will, on the screen in the pub saying “Love is never wrong” but will he listen?  I raise my eyes to the altar and say “God, if you’re there, if you’re listening, he’s one of Yours – couldn’t you just boot him up the backside a bit and make him tell me?

And then I think “Sod it, someone’s got to make the first move” and I lean over to look at the Order of Service, pretending I’m lost again but I curl my finger around where his finger and thumb join, pulling the leaflet towards me, as if to see better, but the pressure is that bit too hard and the finger inserted just a little too far.  He looks across at me and raises an eyebrow.  I smile at him and press again, just a bit.  He’s not stupid, he gets the message.

 

When they start singing “Love Divine All Loves Excelling” the loudest voice in the church is James Hathaway’s

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I dedicate this to The Much Too Merry Maiden who suggested it. I hadn't thought of it but it was very interesting to write


End file.
